


The Future Starts So Slow (The Waiting Game Remix)

by danse (waketosleep)



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: M/M, Not Gundam Wing: Frozen Teardrop Compliant, Post-Series, Remix Revival, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-27 13:23:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12081921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waketosleep/pseuds/danse
Summary: If you love something, let it go; it'll come back when it's damn well good and ready.





	The Future Starts So Slow (The Waiting Game Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anoyo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anoyo/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Observation](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10165706) by [pyrrhical (anoyo)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anoyo/pseuds/pyrrhical). 



> Yeah, sure, brain, let's remix a fandom I haven't written in for a decade. Cool.

If I'd had a pool going--and I totally did not, because that would be _macabre_ \--I would have put pretty long odds on Wufei being one of the longest holdouts, and I would have been very wrong in that assessment. He could never outlast Relena (Relena is a given, a law of the universe, like gravity) but his quiet faith seemed to give Quatre a run for his money in the optimism department.

Wufei knew Heero well enough that this should have told everybody something.

Then again, Trowa knew him pretty well too, and Trowa stopped doing his widow's-walk lookout routine after the first month. Maybe Trowa decided it didn't have anything to do with him and he had other shit going on. I didn't blame him for it. Hilde did, until she also gave up around the six-month mark.

I couldn't tell, right after the war ended, if we'd stay glued together like we were, thrown together by circumstances and all, or if everyone would drift their separate ways. But of course, Heero was as much a force of nature as Relena (just a colder, crueler one) and even when he wasn't there, he still tethered us all together. He became the touchstone for our interactions-- _Have you heard anything? Any word? I heard Relena organized another search party, are you going? I always think I see him out of the corner of my eye. I keep watching the newsnet for bodies, it's gruesome but I'm always so relieved when it's not_ \--and aside from trauma, he was maybe the only thing we still had in common. It was easy to tell when someone decided they'd had enough of the emotional rollercoaster, the fruitless searching and the anger (I think most everyone knew he couldn't actually be dead, which made being _gone_ much harder to deal with). When they let Heero go, they also disappeared. Not in the same way he did, because nobody could vanish with his style and flair, but quietly, with a sense of resignation.

I couldn't blame any of them, either. Besides, they all made sure to leave me a forwarding address. I never got the sense that this was information they shared with the whole team (maybe in Quatre and Relena's cases, it was) and I never asked why me, but I did dutifully file that information away in a little paper book that I kept secure.

I got asked a lot of leading questions over those months, plenty of coy and subtle probes at my motivations which I never answered. It didn't matter to the outcome so I didn't see why anyone should care what I thought. But Relena, the last holdout, hope personified, called me late one night sounding drunk and teary and finally just asked me, point-blank.

"You've never looked. Not that you ever said, anyway. You're just... so silent about it all. Why? Don't you even care? Do you think he's really dead?"

I'd known since the phone woke me up that it was going to be this kind of phone call; I shifted to a more comfortable position on my side, jammed my pillow up under my neck a bit more and just let the phone lay on my cheek, over my ear and my mouth. Relena was always the bravest one among us, so I rewarded her drunk three A.M. boldness with a straight answer.

"I'm just waiting," I said, holding back a yawn. "I learned how to be patient with that son of a bitch the hard way."

She was quiet long enough that I wondered if she'd hung up or passed out, but I just let my eyes drift closed and left the phone balanced on my face. "Waiting," she said finally. "You think he's just gonna come back one day?"

He kind of had a pattern of doing exactly that, I didn't point out. "Well," I said instead, feeling sleepy and warm and not really paying attention to what I was saying, "if he doesn't come back then he was never ours to begin with, or whatever."

She laughed at that. I thought it sounded like laughing, anyway. Maybe she was crying some more. "I don't like it when you're the wise one," she said after a bit.

"Sorry."

"Sorry I woke you up." She cleared her throat and sounded a little more normal, less drunk and sad. "I hope you'll tell me when he comes back."

She still wasn't at 'if', it was still 'when'. I don't know how she maintains that level of faith so consistently, with everything. I never will. "Why me?" I asked.

She made a little noise that might have been a scoff, or a sob she couldn't hold back. "He's not going to come back to _me_ ," she said, like it was painfully obvious. "I think I'm old enough and smart enough to know better by now."

I didn't know what to say, so for once I didn't say anything. It seemed to work.

"Take care, Duo," she said softly.

"You too," I said, with an inkling that there weren't going to be any more phone calls. I'd add her to the book in the morning.

***

He came back on a Wednesday. It was early evening and it had been raining all day; water dripped off the edge of my roof behind him when I opened the door, and his hair and the shoulders of his jacket were both damp-darkened. We had a silent staring contest for a minute before I stepped back from the door and waved him inside, and he hesitated for just a second at the threshold before coming in and abandoning his shoes on the mat. All he had on him was a black backpack, so probably just a change of clothes. Toothbrush. Basics that would let him bunk down anywhere. I moved on autopilot, letting him follow me into the house without a word.

I never indulged myself in picturing how this might go down, what we might say to each other or what we'd do. I feel like I left fantasies behind in my Gundam, like I cast off a lot of things and picked adulthood and stability instead. But I was being modest when I acted to Relena, during that late-night confessional, like I didn't think Heero would choose my doorway to darken. I've never had a problem lying to Relena but I can't lie to myself, not when I installed myself in a place with a second bedroom, as if I would ever have guests stay with me. But the bed in there was decently comfortable; I never bothered leaving sheets on it to get musty, so we were presented with a bare mattress when I pushed the door open. The floor was clear and the dresser was empty, no treadmills or boxes of tax paperwork shoved in there to be forgotten. It wasn't my space to clutter up.

He dropped his backpack on the floor and I opened the closet to pull sheets off the top shelf. My elbow set the empty clothes hangers to jangling against each other and I left the door standing open when I threw the folded sheets onto the mattress. The box in the bottom of the closet had a fine layer of dust on it; I spared it a glance but his name was visibly scrawled on the top flap, so I trusted his natural nosiness would have him digging through it as soon as he had some privacy. There was a little linen closet in the hallway where I kept the clean towels. "Shower's in there," I said, holding out a towel to him and waving at the open door across the hall.

He looked at the towel, then up at my face, then away from me in a sweeping glance that was probably cataloguing the whole setup. "Thanks," he said, taking the towel.

"Yep," I said, and left him to it to finish making dinner.

He wandered into the kitchen fifteen minutes later with his hair shower-damp instead of rain-damp, clean-shaven and wearing a shirt that I knew had been in his box of stuff. The sight of that was oddly satisfying and I tried not to start grinning like a weirdo as I ladled soup into a bowl for him. He sniffed it and his eyebrows went up in approval, with a little more surprise than I would have liked.

"Peanut gallery comments about my cooking will be rewarded with dish duty," I warned before he could open his mouth. 

"Smells good," he said, instead of whatever smartass comment had been on the tip of his tongue. I pretended not to see the little smirk and we both ate standing up, leaning against the counter where I'd left vegetable scraps in a heap on my cutting board.

"How did you end up with my stuff?" he asked eventually. "I forgot I owned some of that."

I dragged my spoon through my soup, sending carrots and noodles into swirling eddies. "Wufei knew where one of your more recent bolt-holes was and he and I went to check on it, clean it out." My next words weren't entirely accurate. "We figured if I kept it, at least we'd know where it was when you came back."

"Thanks," he said. "Although I don't know if I can take it all. The books...."

The broom closet of an apartment Wufei had led me to on an L1 station hadn't contained much. Aside from clothes, a well-stocked first aid kit and a couple dusty boxes of energy bars, there had been a handgun lockbox (empty, when I picked the lock open), a couple of knives, and books. The books seemed like kind of a big deal. "It can all stay here," I said. "It's not like it was getting in my way. You can stay too," I added after a moment, because it was starting to look like I needed to actually say that out loud. "You can see I have the space."

He finished his soup, and when I held up the ladle questioningly he nodded for more. "I appreciate you letting me use your spare room," he said, clearly not getting it. I decided to let it go.

"It's no problem. Mi casa es su casa." Okay, _now_ I would let it go. "Are you going to stick around?" I asked instead.

I meant in general, not in my house, but he answered, "Maybe for a little while," and I couldn't tell from that how he'd interpreted the question.

"Okay," I said, regrouping. "How long would you like me to hold off on telling everyone you're back? Because I'm cool with you working your way up to it but if the answer is 'indefinitely', when they find out anyway I'm going to throw you to the wolves."

Heero blinked. "Who is 'everyone' and why do you have to tell them I'm here?"

I thought about my little contact book, locked in a fireproof safe with my travel documents. I knew why I had it; I had been entrusted with all that information with an implicit promise to tell them all that no, Heero was not dead, just being a ghost again. Sally Po had moved houses three months prior and sent me a message with her updated contact info, the first and only word I'd had from her since the spring. They'd all just... left it in my capable hands, so to speak. I tried to think of how to relate this to Heero without yelling and smacking him upside the head.

"'Everyone' is basically everyone you know who's still alive and not trying to kill you," I said. "Letting them know you're still in one piece and no longer fallen off the face of existence is kind of... common courtesy."

He looked anywhere but at me for a moment. "Right," he said. "I think... just give me a bit. To...." he trailed off. "I'll tell them. Just not yet."

I shrugged and nodded and started looking for a container to pour the leftover soup into. He did the dishes after all.

***

Heero hung around for about two weeks and as far as I could tell between my comings and goings from work, he spent a lot of that time sleeping. He was probably about two years behind on sleep so I wasn't surprised. After the war ended, pretty much the first thing I did once things calmed down was put a couple locked doors (and a gun on the nightstand) between me and the rest of the world and then pass out for days and days--weeks, honestly. I basically hibernated like a bear, looking back on it.

When he wasn't sleeping, he was usually reading a book. One or two looked like they were from his collection and then he started in on mine. I will admit only to myself that I looked at the little stack of books from his bolt-hole and tried to divine something of his personality from them. All I gleaned from them was that he had two from the same writer, and later on I impulse-bought two of her more recent books. They'd sat pristine on my bookshelf ever since, unread; I told myself I was going to get around to them and never did. They were basically the first of my books he went for. It felt good to see him reading them and I wondered if she was a favourite author. It felt like I'd gotten him an awesome Christmas present or something. I thought about telling him to keep the books but that was tantamount to saying I hadn't bought them for _myself_ to read, which was a silly and weird implication.

Sometimes he made dinner too, and cooking turned out to be one of the few things I can do better than him. I was very gracious about this and didn't give him a hard time, because I had matured over the intervening years and also, it didn't need to be said. We both knew.

It was really comfortable, having him around. Doing all the dishes every night. I got used to sharing my space with him.

And then I woke up late on my day off and on my way to the kitchen, an absent glance into his bedroom through the open door revealed that he was still living out of his backpack. I tried to let it go. I lasted three hours.

"I meant it when I said you could stay, you know."

We were sitting around in front of the TV and he was doing the Sunday crossword puzzle with a pen. He blinked up at me.

"You can... act like you live here," I elaborated into the silence. "Move in, buy stuff, receive your mail, rearrange your furniture, whatever. If you haven't figured out yet that I'm okay with that...."

He looked vaguely uncomfortable. "I should probably think about moving on soon," he said slowly.

"Oh? Where to?" I asked, because I knew.

The silence stretched out. I remembered him being a better liar, I thought. "I can't just hang around your house," he said finally.

"Why not?"

"I don't freeload."

"You're not freeloading."

He put the newspaper down. "I've pretty much done nothing since I've been here."

"So get a job, then," I said, feeling like a dog with a bone. "I guess I can charge you rent, if that'll make you feel better about it."

He was actually speechless for a minute. That was rare. "Duo," he said when he'd marshaled words again, "you can't just--I can't just stay here and interrupt your life forever!"

"What are you interrupting?" I asked, spreading my hands to encompass... my living room. "I spend my weekends napping and channel surfing. You've fit into that busy schedule without much problem."

I think it was how calm I was that really pushed his buttons. He shot to his feet. "Don't do this. Do _not._ " His hands were clenched at his sides.

"Don't do _what_?" I demanded. "Ask to keep things like they are?"

"I am not your fucking _charity case_ ," he snapped. "I don't want your pity!"

Somehow I was also on my feet (about two sword-lengths away). "As if I would be fucking stupid enough to pity you!"

For a second I was pretty sure he was going to take a swing at me; I watched the tic in his jaw and which direction he was shifting his weight to try and anticipate the shot. But then he spun on his heel and stalked out of the room in an icy silence. I heard the front door slam a few moments later.

He'd taken his shoes and jacket and left everything else in his room, backpack still perpetually half-packed and ready to go in minutes but abandoned on the bedroom floor anyway. Well, it was just stuff. He'd never owned anything he couldn't walk away from without a second thought. I could remember when I used to be the same way.

I shut the bedroom door behind me and walked wearily back down the hall toward the living room. I couldn't rule out the possibility that I'd just leave everything in that room undisturbed, like some museum exhibit. Maybe the only proof Heero Yuy ever existed: some cheap clothes and worn-out paperbacks, a half-made bed. A half-empty tube of toothpaste on the bathroom counter.

Time for a nap, I decided.

***

Just after midnight, I was sitting on one of the barstools at my kitchen counter, eating a cookie and thinking about going to bed, when the front door opened and scared the hell out of me. I reached for a gun I didn't carry anymore and then settled for one of the smaller knives out of my knife block, creeping out of the kitchen toward the entryway of my house with adrenaline pumping through me.

Heero was kicking his shoes off, looking for all the world like he'd just come back from running an errand. I almost dropped the knife. The surprised and relieved noise I made drew his attention and he looked up at me sharply.

I walked a few steps into the entryway and said, "I thought you were g--" The rest of the word was lost, because he swooped in, grabbed me by the face and kissed me. My knees gave out a little in shock and he pressed his advantage, twisting to back me up against the wall beside the living room. My brain started to get with the program and I kissed back; he curved one hand along the line of my jaw, fingers digging into my hair, and the other slid down over my shoulder and the front of my chest to caress my side and grip the top of my hip, pressing me further into the wall. I flailed a little, remembered suddenly I was still holding a knife, and finally just reached behind me and jammed it into the drywall. I could fix it later. Maybe I'd make him fix it later. Right now, I needed to shove both hands into his hair and reel him in closer. He made a noise in the back of his throat when my fingers pressed into his scalp and insinuated a knee between mine. It was hard to tell where I ended and he began.

My heart felt full and warm and my mind was quiet. There had always been something missing between us, something that had kept our edges from fitting together like they should have. I don't think either one of us knew what it was until recently, but we had both known it had left a hole.

We had to stop kissing eventually to take a full breath; I leaned my forehead into his and closed my eyes. "You came back," I said. "Welcome back." 

"Of course I did," he said, relaxing against me. "I always come back, don't I?"

I stroked a hand up and down the bumps of his spine as he rested his chin on my shoulder (it seemed we actually fit together pretty well). "You do," I agreed. "Sooner or later, you always do." Everyone else would be relieved to hear he'd finally returned.

 

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> I missed the signups for Remix Revival, which was crushingly sad for me because I loved writing for Remix, so I was glad to get a chance to pinch-hit, and for someone I already knew, no less! I've now realized that pinch-hitting is awesome if you have the time to do it, since you get to look at their work before you commit. Maybe I'll do it again!


End file.
